


One more time (Gotta start all over)

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Also Second Kiss, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Getting Together, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 12:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19441501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: It’s a nice day, they’ve been standing on Steve’s private beach throwing a tennis ball into the water over and over for Eddie, and Danny kisses Steve. That’s the start of it.Well, that, and Steve freezing up, wrenching away and almost growling, “I can’t believe you’d do that.”





	One more time (Gotta start all over)

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I wrote most of this on my phone. That was a while back, and today it decided that it wanted to have an end, which is something I highly encourage in most of my writing, so I gave it one. (A happy one! No worries.)
> 
> The title is from the lyrics of Polaroid, a song by Imagine Dragons.

It’s a nice day, they’ve been standing on Steve’s private beach throwing a tennis ball into the water over and over for Eddie, and Danny kisses Steve. That’s the start of it.

Well, that, and Steve freezing up, wrenching away and almost growling, “I can’t believe you’d do that.” He’s frowning like his eyebrows have grown too heavy for his face to support. He doesn’t quite rub his mouth to get Danny’s cooties off, but he does bring up a hand to touch his own lips and keeps his hand hovering there, like he needs to shield himself from any further attacks from Danny’s corner.

Danny, stomach sunk so far it’s somewhere around his ankles now, isn’t even thinking about forcing himself on Steve again, because he’s not a psychopath, thank you. He is, however, angry. Perhaps irrationally so - he’s wanted an answer for months now, and here it is, pretty fucking unambiguous as far as these things go, so at the very least he got half of what he wanted, even if it doesn’t feel that way - but angry, nonetheless. “Jesus, Steve,” he bites back, because it’s easy and he’s good at it. “What’s your problem?”

Steve’s eyebrows have found a new will to live. They shoot up, powered by what looks like one hundred percent green, renewable indignation. “What’s my problem? Don’t you think I should be the one asking you that?”

“No.” Danny tries to say another word, but finds that he suddenly has to clear his throat, which knocks his anger down a peg. Great. Stellar, really - make a move, get rejected and start crying. Real smooth. That’s just what he needs to show Steve what he’s missing out on. “No,” he tries again. His voice comes out normal, but the fire has burned out. “You don’t have to ask me that, because I think I just demonstrated it very plainly.”

“Exactly!” Steve yells back, which is stupid and mean, so Danny ignores it.

They both, in otherwise completely absent harmony, ignore Eddie when he drops the ball at their feet with a wag of his tail and circles around to stare at it hopefully.

Danny stabs a finger at Steve’s chest. Getting all up in people’s space is a good fallback – it makes you look like you’ve still got some kind of fight in you, even if all you really want to do is lie down flat on the floor and contemplate what’s on the exact opposite side of the globe from Hawaii, and whether you’ve got the funds to move yourself and your kids there. “You, on the other hand,” he spits at Steve, “could really work on being a little less of a dick about this.”

Steve bats Danny’s hand away hard enough that it stings a little, and then leans in too, spreading his arms wide and using his height to loom, like he thinks he’s actually got a shred of moral high ground here. He looks livid. “You’re the one who’s putting everything on the line!”

“Yes, which is why-”

“And for what? For what, Danny?”

“-you could really stand to be a little fucking nicer about trampling-”

“Do you really think so little of our friendship that you’d be willing to risk it for an easy lay?”

“-my goddamn heart, you asshole!” Danny screams, which is a good finish, he thinks, but then he ruins it by adding, at about half the volume, “Wait, did you just-”

“I don’t think-” Steve starts, almost simultaneously, and then cuts off with the same synchronicity. Steve’s eyes have gone huge, too, proving they’ve both mastered the art of listening while actively arguing right over whatever is being said. 

There’s a moment where Danny’s stomach, a gross puddle of innards that had sunk low enough to pool at his feet, swoops back up to his belly with such whiplash speeds that it bumps his heart up into his throat. 

Steve takes a small step back. His arms fall down limply at his side, but he lifts one of them to gesture mutely for Danny to go first.

“Easy lay?” Danny repeats with a good amount of incredulity, because he has to, and they’re the only words he has at the ready, for once. 

Steve shrugs. It looks awkward, which is not a very common thing for a McGarrett. “You kissed me out of nowhere.” He even _sounds_ sheepish, but at least they’ve left the yelling miles behind them. “It was reasonable to assume.”

“Reasonable to assume I’d decided I wanted to swap our actual friendship for being what, fuckbuddies?” Danny’s mind boggles. He’s always known that Steve’s reasonable doesn’t necessarily match his own, but they rarely have differences of opinion in this order of magnitude that don’t have anything to do with grenades or jumping off of buildings. 

Steve shrugs again, but with even less conviction.

“Easy lay?” Danny repeats, more incredulously than the first time, because Steve is not the only one who can be obnoxious. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called an easy person before in my _life_ , in any context whatsoever.”

“I thought you knew I wanted you.”

“I had a hunch,” Danny says. “Hence, kissing, intended to express some reciprocity.”

“No, I meant-” Steve casts his eyes heavenward like he expects meaning to come falling from the sky. “I thought you knew I _wanted_ you. You know, carnally.” 

“Carnally,” Danny echoes, mocking.

Steve ignores him, which might be for the best. He’s intent suddenly, eyes boring into Danny’s face. “But you were talking about hearts just now. I walked over your heart?”

“Trampled was the word I used, I think.” Steve’s face crumples and he looks so wretched that Danny, damn that heart of his they’re discussing, can’t help but want to take that feeling away. He waves a hand around. “Hey, it’s fine. My insides are used to some stuff.”

“I know. You gave me part of them.”

“Hey. Yeah.” He weirdly doesn’t know what else to say to that. He jams his hands in his jeans pockets and rocks back on his heels. “So. How’s the liver doing today?”

Steve blinks at him morosely. “Good. Feeling stupid.”

“Hey, that’s my liver. I won’t take kindly to it if you make it feel unloved.”

“I never want to make any part of you feel unloved, Danny.”

There are a lot of things Danny wants to say to that, _this has become a really fucking strange conversation_ being just one of many. He steels himself and goes for something more likely to keep them somewhat on topic. “Yeah, well. Ditto.”

Steve nods like a point has just been made and Steve might need to suffer for it for the rest of his life. “And that’s why I can’t do this if it’s just sex.”

“Duh, neither could I.” Danny kicks Steve’s shin and doesn’t put a lot of effort into doing it softly. Steve deserves it, and he hardly even flinches anyway. “Listen, you idiot, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. It’s gonna be hard to do that without letting some feelings spill out. In fact, I’m notoriously bad at not loudly feeling things.”

“Oh. Cool,” Steve says, because even if they’re talking in promises tantamount to wedding vows before they’ve even had a good, real first kiss, Steve is still emotionally stunted.

And Danny still loves him. Damn his heart.

“I love you too,” Steve says, because maybe, just maybe, he has been making some progress on the expressing feelings front since that fateful day they held each other at gunpoint in Steve’s garage. 

“Okay,” Danny says.

“Okay,” Steve agrees. He bends over to grab the sandy tennis ball at their feet. Eddie has long since abandoned all hope at either one of them coming to their senses after all this time and has flopped down a few feet away, but he’s back up in a flash, cheerfully splashing out into the surf before Steve has even lifted his arm to throw. The ball sails through the air and lands with a modest but satisfying splash.

“Nice one.”

“Thanks.” Steve is glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, so Danny looks back frankly. Steve doesn’t let himself be scared off, which is heartening. “Can we- Do you think we can start over?”

“Throwing the ball? Sure.” Eddie is already paddling a U-turn and heading back for the shore with the tennis ball between his teeth. Steve is beginning to frown again, so Danny takes pity on him. “Or did you mean the kissing thing?” To be completely fair to Steve, it might, just possibly, a little bit, have been Danny’s own lack of proper communication beforehand that made things go pear-shaped. It’s only right that he takes his responsibility in trying to fix it.

“Yes, obviously I meant the kissing thing,” Steve says, and he sounds almost scathing, which is even more heartening. “Unless you’d rather keep throwing-”

Danny decides that no, he wouldn’t rather whatever the end of that sentence was going to be. He grabs both of Steve’s shoulders and Steve shuts up immediately. “Shut up,” he says, anyway, just for good measure. He tugs on Steve’s shoulders, but he doesn’t have to, because Steve is already ducking down to eagerly meet him in the middle.

It’s a nice day, they’ve been standing on Steve’s private beach arguing over stupid shit, and Danny kisses Steve. That’s the real start of it.

Well, that, and Steve kissing him back, of course.

(It lasts, rose-colored and toe-curling and innard-melting, right up until the moment that Eddie emerges from the water and decides to shake out his fur in a spot where the humans get caught in the spray perfectly. “ _Rude_ , Edward,” Steve tells Eddie, sounding perturbed, and they all smell like wet dog and saltwater, and Danny, for some unfathomable reason, can’t stop grinning.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Comments are much appreciated. ❤
> 
> I'm on Tumblr as [itwoodbeprefect](https://itwoodbeprefect.tumblr.com), or with my exclusively H50 sideblog as [five-wow](https://five-wow.tumblr.com).


End file.
